BIBLES have been restored to bedside lockers at Macclesfield General Hospital, in Cheshire: something not seen since before the pandemic, when fears of cross-infection led to their removal from hospitals throughout the UK.
They are being provided by the organisation Good News for Everyone, formerly the Gideons. They come in the form of shrink-wrapped scriptures — typically the New Testament, Psalms, and Proverb — that patients can unwrap, use, and take home, or that can be wiped clean and returned to the locker for the next occupant.
Wendy Moss, a nurse who has worked at the hospital since 1978, is a licensed lay minister, and chairs the Cheshire North branch of Good News for Everyone. “Most people know us as Gideons, but we’re the same people, doing the same work, just with a different name,” she said.
“The presence of the Gideon Bible was always a constant comfort and reassurance for many patients, until their removal during Covid. . . We’re very grateful to the East Cheshire NHS Trust for all the help and support they’ve given us in achieving [the return of the Bibles], and, from this month, we’ll be distributing them a ward at a time.”
Concerns have surfaced intermittently over the years. Hospitals in Leicester expressed uneasiness about the possible risk of MRSA infection, in 2005, in the absence of covers that could not be wiped clean effectively if stained or contaminated.
But, after studying research findings in 2010, Nottingham University Hospitals Trust was one that decided not to ban the bedside Bibles but to keep them in removable, washable holders and protective covers, and to introduce single-use Bibles on wards for patients with virulent infections.
A ward sister on an Acute Admissions Unit at Tameside Hospital has testified to the distress of working on an acute Covid ward during the pandemic, when many people who were dying had no one but nurses to hold their hands.
“Our work became frightening, emotionally and physically draining,” she told Good News for Everyone. “As I called out to the Lord on many occasions, he gave me many comforting words of scripture, especially Psalm 46 — ‘Be still and know that I am God.’ This psalm I read over and over again from my Bible which I carry in my pocket at work. I wanted to thank you for placing Bibles in the hospital.
“Other members of staff heard me reading to patients, and remarked, ‘What lovely poems they are.’ I had many opportunities to witness to staff, and some of them read these psalms to patients and also carried these Bibles in their scrubs pockets.
“We had no church ministers available in the hospital; so your Bibles have been a real blessing and light in this dark situation.”